An interview that credits Pope Francis as saying about 2% of Roman Catholic clerics are paedophiles stirred controversy Sunday, as the Vatican sought to raise questions about the article’s accuracy and others called on the pope to take more action on the issue.
The interview by Eugenio Scalfari, published Sunday, quotes the pope as calling the rash of sex abuse scandals “a leprosy in our home” and saying the pedophiles include “priests and even bishops and cardinals,” according to a CBS News translation. “And others, even more numerous, know about it but keep quiet, they punish without saying the reason why. I find this state of things untenable and it is my intention to confront it with the severity it requires.”
The Vatican has pushed back on some points. According to Vatican officials, Scalfari does not record his conversations with the pope nor transcribe them word for word. News.va, an official Vatican news source, cited Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi as saying Scalfari quotes Francis from memory alone, and that the pope does not review the results before publication.
Any excuse.
Did Pope Francis really say 2% of Catholic clergy are paedophiles? (Lauren Raab, LA Times)
Pic: Wikipedia
Sell all Church holdings in Ireland and give the money directly to the victims. Money where mouth is. (And no hiding of assets.)
Of course that’s going to happen.
Assets to mouth now.
‘Money where mouth is.’
This doesn’t make sense. The Pope allegedly said that 2% of the Church are paedophiles and that others are complicit. He suggested that he was going to take stern action on this.
He did not suggest that he was going to compensate victims by impoverishing his organisation.
1/50 chance of being molested by a man who preaches about the end of the world, how bad we all are and that we are all going to hell and the acts of a mad rabbi who may of may not have existed 2000 years ago ? I like those odds!!!
2% of the clergy being paedophiles does not translate into a 2% of abuse for any individual member of the Church.
Two obvious questions: where’s he getting the 2% figure from and is this above or below the general population level?
…he probably picked it out of somebody’s arse.
He picked that figure from the sky, along with everything else.
They sent around a survey monkey form.
As always there’s a Father Ted quote for all occasions:
This whole paedophile priests thing is all out of proportion. If there are 200 million priests in the world and 5% are paedophiles…then that’s only 10 million.
Everyone should be watching new show Ray Donovan.
Especially ABM if he’s about.
6% is more accurate.